by Shaun Meany
President of The PEiR Group
This week I attended HP’s New Product Introduction (NPI) here in Northern California. I thought it might be helpful to update the members on what HP is doing in the technical or CAD printer market.
Our first session was an introduction by Pat Hester (HP’s Director of Wide Format Printing Solutions), highlighting HP’s success with their Designjet product line over the last 15 years or so.
Pat offered an extremely well done video about HP’s technical leadership in thermal inkjet technologies. Their focus on innovation is something that any prospect would like to see and learn about. Meany Note: one of our PEiR members, Andy Chiodo from Entire Imaging in Toronto, was featured in the testimonial portion of the video!
HP has a big “Cash-in and Trade-Up” promotion underway to attack the installed base of their older plotters. The opportunities are huge. Pat says there are more than 45,000 HP 600, 700 and 800 series and more than 27,000 HP 1050 and 1055 series still out in the market today.
Key products presented at the NPI were the HP1120, HP4020 and the HP T1120 MFP. Basically, HP updated their existing 1100’s and 4000’s with more RAM and Disk Space.
Something I took away from the session was how HP is positioning their products as solutions. HP is now bundling a variety of software tools along with their printers. One such tool is Accounting Excel 2.0, an easy to use utility that reports all printing activity along with related consumables into a worksheet used to recover project or department printing costs.
Another interesting component of their solution approach is an easy to use poster software application called Serif Poster Designer Pro. It gives end-users all the design power they need to achieve fantastic posters and banners for a variety of vertical applications (schools, real estate, retail, and other).
There are other software tools that you will want to familiarize yourselves with such as the HP instant print, embedded web server (EWS) and webjet admin.
HP knows it needs to help its channel partners promote and market their products as as a result have released some exciting marketing tools. If you visit the following web portals you will find a wealth of resources to aid your company’s sales and marketing efforts.
Partner Portal
Campaign Central
Designjet Expressway web site
www.hp.com/go/newdesignjet
www.hp.com/go/betterdesignjet
www.hp.com/go/media
If you are not offering FM’s it is my opinion you might want to start by looking at HP’s latest printers for the CAD, GIS and Technical marketplace. You will be glad you did!
If you are interested in attending one of HP’s New Product Introductions in your area click HERE to find one in your area.
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